Esterwegen Memorial WES LandscapeArchitecture with H.H. Krafft, Berlin

The Esterwegen memorial (landscape design: WES LandschaftsArchitektur with Hans-Hermann Krafft; documentation and visitor information centre: Hans-Dieter Schaal) commemorates all 15 Emsland camps and their victims. Parts of the camp topography that are no longer visible, which stand for violence and threat, are translated into a symbolic language of form through the use of Corten steel elements, among other things, and in this way make it possible to experience the traces of the former camp. A place of "active remembrance" was created, which encourages the visitor to let the history and topography emerge in his imagination.

No structural elements of the former concentration camp and prison camp Esterwegen were preserved above ground. The camp road, lined with tall trees, forms the backbone of the site. From a tightly spaced stand of tall American red oaks above the former barrack sites, "tree packages" were cut out in the prisoners' area to mark the barracks. This proposal, which was the subject of much discussion in advance, has created a spatially very strong and almost park-like element, despite its monotonous addition. Only with the reddish-brown lava graveling of the prisoners' area, reminiscent of peat, and the silhouette-like silhouettes of high, massive walls of Corten steel, does the overall impression of a "thinking space" between barrenness, information and emotion unfold.

The steel discs mark the course of the wall at the corners, on the long sides in the area of the watchtowers and at the gateways on Lagerstraße.
The camp road as a "place of inhuman harassment", forms the backbone of the memorial. All the more important was the examination of the perspective perception along the Lagerstraße. Furthermore, it was a design concern to recall the cruel hardship, inhumanity, isolation and lostness of the prisoners with the interpretation of the funnel-shaped inner gate to the prisoners' area, without slipping into a false or irritating pathos.

In order to point out the important landscape and historically significant connections, the idea arose to place a footbridge as a new entrance situation between two existing former halls of the Bundeswehr and to connect it with the camp road and the moor.

The "not setting sun" and the "sometime rising sun" - in the camp songs of the "Moor soldiers", sung over and over again - offered inspiration for the handling of the steel elements. In the western steel slice at the end of the camp road, a long slit at eye level focuses the rays of the setting sun. At the same time, this slit is also a piece of "cut-out" landscape. It stands for the view of the 14 other Emsland camps, whose names are lasered into the steel below the slit.
The high steel slice to the east, in the dimensions of the former outer gate, acts as a "silent" closed element. A centrally arranged vertical slot is reminiscent of gate wings and focuses the light of the rising sun.